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Diasporic World Literature: The Vale of Cedars in the Global Haskalah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2025

Lital Levy
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Abstract

This essay follows the translation history of the Anglo-Jewish author Grace Aguilar’s novel The Vale of Cedars (1850) from London through central and eastern Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Conjoining world literature, translation studies, diaspora studies, and Jewish literary studies, it argues for two interventions: a rethinking of world literature vis-à-vis diaspora, and a global, multilingual, and translational approach to the literature of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Aguilar’s novel, a work of minor literature about crypto-Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, was originally intended as a refutation of English conversionists. By the end of the century the novel had inspired multiple free translations into Hebrew, Yiddish, and Judeo-Arabic, refashioned to instill readers with pride in historical Jewish nobility and martyrdom. Mapping the book’s multilingual, transcontinental journey and elucidating the linguistic and cultural markers of its rewritings, the essay shows how diaspora connected such diverse translations and offers a new perspective on world literature.

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PMLA , Volume 140 , Issue 3 , May 2025 , pp. 406 - 427
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© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Modern Language Association of America

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